Packed Prisons Turn To Disturbing Solution

JACKSON, MISS. — For Linda Grantham, life in a wheelchair means missing the little things and a constant fight against bitterness and bad memories.

''He'll be locked up. I'll be like this for the rest of my life,'' said the 41-year-old bank officer. ''He can still feed himself. He can scratch his nose. Things I'll never be able to do.''

Grantham is talking about Clem Jimson, a convicted murderer accused of shooting her in the neck and paralyzing her just five weeks after Jimson was paroled from the state's crowded prison system.

It is a system battered by political warfare, bound by a state treasury that can ill afford new prisons and threatened with huge fines from a federal judge if it violates strict inmate population limits.

With the nation's 14th-highest rate of imprisonment, Mississippi's prison system, like others in the Deep South, constantly threatens to exceed these limits. The state has found only one way to dodge the federal fines -- set prisoners free, prisoners like Clem Jimson.

''We're under the gun here,'' said Gov. Bill Allain, whose government is swimming in a $20 million river of red ink. ''We've got to let some of them out.''

It is a quick fix haunted by a nightmare. Suppose a prisoner paroled early kills or hurts someone? For state officials who have come to depend on this solution for prison crowding, the case of Linda Grantham is that nightmare come true.

Prison reform experts say the case is also a graphic lesson for other states grappling with a prison population problem, including Florida.

The experts recommend solutions other than paroling prisoners: Quit jamming inmates in jail for relatively minor offenses, develop alternative forms of punishment and devise sentencing guidelines that take into account the capacity of prisons.

Grantham was left paralyzed from the neck down by the Feb. 12 attack in the parking lot of a suburban Jackson bank where she worked. She has sued the state parole board for $4 million, claiming the board freed Jimson without a full review of his criminal record.

As she talks about her case, she smiles bravely. Her hands, bony and in braces, sit motionless on the wheelchair's aluminum tray.

''I blame the parole board more than him,'' she said. ''They may be overworked, they may not be qualified. Maybe they don't care.''

Her attorney, Alvin Binder, who defended Atlanta child murderer Wayne Williams, said the four members of the parole board made hurried, uninformed decisions.

Binder said the board freed Jimson even though they didn't have a file that told of his 22 years in prison for murder, armed robbery, assualt and other offenses.

The board released Jimson and 73 other prisoners on Jan. 9. Lisa Milner, Binder's daughter and Grantham's co-counsel, says this shows the board is overworked and pressured by the need to relieve crowding in a prison system that is always on the verge of violating a federal judge's mandate.

Allain defends the parole board.

''You can look at any state and find somebody that's slipped through the cracks,'' he said. ''It's a judgment call. The board just doesn't have the staff to do up all the information they need.''

In June the board released about 100 prisoners after Allain invoked an emergency powers act that allows him to advance the parole dates of prisoners when the system comes close to the federal population limits.

Two weeks ago the state correction's board asked the governor to invoke the act again. He has until Monday to do so.

Mississippi is not the only state under federal court mandates to ease prison crowding. Nine other Southern states, including Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Texas and Tennessee, are under similar orders. On Wednesday a federal judge ordered Tennessee not to admit any new convicts to the state's prisons. All are states that have seen their populations balloon with the Sun Belt boom, a boom that has brought an increase in crime and placed more pressure on prison systems.

Increased crime isn't the only reason for more inmates. Prison experts point to better law enforcement and tougher laws. Both lead to increases in the number of prisoners that outpace the level of violent crime.

Florida is typical of this trend. The U.S. Bureau of Prisons says that in the last 10 years violent crime in the state has increased 28 percent. But in the same period its incarceration rate -- the ratio of people behind bars to those not in prison -- has increased 75.5 percent.

Mississippi provides an even sharper contrast. In the last 10 years its crime rate has dropped 15.8 percent. But its incarceration rate has increased 150 percent, the largest increase in any Southern state. In other words, the state is seeing less violent crime, but is putting more people in prison.